Was boxer Ryan Garcia unusually prescient with his prediction that an earthquake would hit Los Angeles and Las Vegas on June 6, 2024? No, that's not true: There was no earthquake in Las Vegas, Nevada, on June 6, 2024. And there are earthquakes almost daily in and around Los Angeles, according to publicly available records. While minor quakes did occur in the Los Angeles area on June 6, 2024, there were no reports of property damage or injury from any of them. Scientists are unable to predict earthquakes as the United States Geological Survey reports.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) where it was published on X, formerly known as Twitter, on June 6, 2024. It included a video of Garcia and a caption reading:
Two months ago Ryan Garcia predicted that an earthquake will hit Las Vegas & California today, June 6th, 2024.
There was just an earthquake in California now 😳
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken Mon June 10 15:46:09 2024 UTC)
The clip is from an appearance by Garcia on the "PBD Podcast" hosted by Patrick Bet-David. A video of the episode, which was filmed at Mar-a-Lago, was posted on YouTube on April 23, 2024. Garcia made the claim about the earthquakes beginning at the 1:18:48-mark:
A search on the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) website (archived here) of all earthquakes sized 0.5 and up from April 1, 2024, to June 10, 2024, shows daily earthquakes in and around the Los Angeles, California area, as this screenshot shows:
(Source: X screenshot taken Mon June 10 15:57:24 2024 UTC)
The strongest earthquake in the Los Angeles area on June 6, 2024 was a 3.6 magnitude temblor near Newport Beach, California, according to the USGS. There were no reports of injuries or property damage, according to local news reports.
But June 6, 2024, was a typical day in earthquake-prone Southern California. There were 27 earthquakes measured by USGS that day in Southern California, according to a Lead Stories count of quakes listed on the USGS map. Compared with 43 earthquakes on the USGS map for Southern California a day earlier -- June 5 -- and 24 quakes counted a day later -- June 7 -- June 6, 2024, was not an extraordinary earthquake day in terms of number or strength.
The search of the USGS website did not show any earthquakes in Nevada on June 6, 2024, as seen in this search (archived here) of earthquakes across the conterminous U.S. on that day.
As the USGS website (archived here) notes, it is impossible to predict earthquakes:
Neither the USGS nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake. We do not know how, and we do not expect to know how any time in the foreseeable future. USGS scientists can only calculate the probability that a significant earthquake will occur (shown on our hazard mapping) in a specific area within a certain number of years.
